We have had a look at John Simpson’s critical reporting on the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Dutch intellectual Pim Fortuyn, whose anxieties about Islam Simpson clearly does not share. Though soft on Islam, Simpson is very hard on Israel.
You will not be surprised to learn that John Simpson’s reports on Israel have been consistently, almost comically, unfair. This decades-long anti-Israel bias, with Israel being presented as an aggressive little Sparta, always hell-bent on making trouble for innocent Palestinians, is a staple of BBC reporting, usually on the lines of “the Israeli tail seems to wag the American dog.” In 2001, he described Ariel Sharon as “the architect of the massacre at Sabra and Chatila in 1982.” As everyone knows, it was not the Israelis, but the Christian Phalange, settling scores because of the PLO massacres of Christians in northern Lebanon, who were responsible for Sabra and Chatila. But twenty years after the massacre, John Simpson was still blaming the Israelis. You can find out much more about Simpson’s coverage here. Let it be noted that this anti-Israel bias makes him no different from most of his colleagues at the BBC, such as Jeremy Bowen, or Barbara Plett, who wept openly when she heard that Arafat died, or Lyse Doucet, whose presentation of the Arab-Israeli conflict makes one wonder if she is merely taking dictation in Ramallah. All in all, it’s a hair-raising spectacle, and no matter how well-reasoned and soberly fact-based the torrent of complaints about its Middle East coverage may be, the BBC continues to largely ignore such criticism.
John Simpson has also been greatly impressed with one of the most insidious charges brought against Israel, one that is a favorite of antisemitic websites. This is the claim that in the middle of the Six-Day War, in all the confusion, anxiety, alarm, misidentification, miscommunication, exhaustion, contributing to the well-known “fog of war,” Israeli planes deliberately attacked the ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, knowing it was American, and killed 34 Americans and wounded more than 100, and did so at the urging of the American government. Exactly why Israel would have wanted to attack a ship belonging to its closest ally no one has ever made clear, though that has not stopped conspiracy theorists from conspiracy-theorizing. The most detailed account of the whole affair, including material newly released, is that by the historian Michael Oren, which is well worth a careful read.
John Simpson, however, of the BBC, was so enamored of the story of a conspiracy, so convinced that Israel was guilty of deliberately attacking an American vessel, though he was no better at offering a plausible reason for such an attack than anyone else, that he chose to write an enthusiastic introduction to one of those books about a supposed U.S.-Israel conspiracy to “hush up” the real reason for the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty. John Simpson’s respectful treatment of one of the favorite fantasies of antisemites apparently does not disqualify him from running the BBC World Services. The book for which he wrote the introduction, Operation Cyanide, is by Peter Hounam, a journalist who specializes in many sorts of conspiracy theories, as in his Who Killed Diana, which purported to prove that she was “murdered” by shadowy figures. Here is the summary of this preposterous book, Operation Cyanide: “This hard-hitting investigation shows that on that day in 1967, the world came closer to all-out nuclear war than ever before — this incident made the Cuban Missile Crisis seem tame by comparison. Peter Hounam reveals that the attack was part of a clandestine plan between the US and Israel known as ‘Operation Cyanide,’ designed to ensure victory for Israel in the Middle East. By blaming the attack on the Arab world, retaliation on a grand scale would be justified.”
“This book will shock any reader interested in Middle-East affairs, as it shows that the U.S. was prepared to sacrifice its men and risk nuclear war to ensure victory for Israel.”
This is the kind of thing John Simpson apparently takes seriously. But it’s not his palpable antipathy to Israel that is now most disturbing. Even more alarming is his coverage of Islam or, rather, his failure to have the BBC cover the subject adequately. He is the man who mocked Pim Fortuyn, both before and after his death, and refused to engage with Fortuyn’s justified anxieties about the future of Europe. He is the man who called Aung San Suu Kyi a “monster,” because she doesn’t share his one-sided views on the situation in Myanmar. He is the man who a few days after the bombings in the London Underground and on buses wrote that “Thursday was a terrible day for London; yet we mustn’t forget that much the same number of people died that day in Iraq, and no one dedicated acres of newsprint to them.” And he was all for minimizing the reaction to such attacks, belonging, as he does, to the “that’s-what-the-terrorists-want” school of idiocy, insisting that “If there is journalistic over-kill, there is also security over-kill.” A decade later, he was still at it, attacking the British press for paying too much attention to Muslim terrorism in Europe; “It’s [the press] grotesquely selective actually. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think the [Paris attacks] don’t matter, it matters hugely what happened in Paris. It’s one of the most important things of this decade. It’s just that you know, 130 people die in other countries and we shouldn’t let ourselves be blinded. If you think the Western media is giving too much attention to Muslim terrorism, John Simpson is the man for you.
John Simpson has been misinforming people now for more than fifty years, on matters big and little, doing his best “to make sense of a crazy world.” His best is not nearly good enough. It’s time for a change. He deserves a rest. And more importantly, so do we.
jewdog says
Thanks, Hugh.
I was leaving the base one day when I noticed an SUV sporting a big sticker reading: “Remember the USS Liberty”.
That was not the first time I’d encountered that; years ago a neighbor brought up the allegation, so I decided to investigate. I found out that there had been SIX congressional investigations, and all concluded that the Israeli attack was an accident. Later, the release of internal, previously classified documents allowed the tracking of the events minute-by-minute, and they clearly showed that it was a tragic accident.
Despite the evidence, we all know that there are people who will never be dissuaded, and we know why.
James Lincoln says
jewdog,
You are correct. To your point, I have included the following link:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-uss-liberty-case-closed-quot
gravenimage says
True, Jewdog and James. Any honest person knows that friendly fire, though tragic, does happen. That’s why there is a term for it.
mortimer says
I suspect John Simpson was bribed by Gulf oil sheikhs to flatter Islam. I also suspect he is working for the British government and/or establishment.
There is no excuse for journalists in the Near East who HAVE NOT DONE THE READING LIST OF ISLAM.
Without reading the SIRA, BUKHARI, KORAN and CANONICAL COMMENTARIES and at least ONE manual of SHARIA LAW (not to mention a few ISLAMIC HISTORIES of the last 1400 years) then HOW IN HELL can someone like John Simpson be an ‘expert’ on Islam or Arab thinking?
Answer: HE CANNOT BE AN EXPERT WITHOUT READING THE LIST OF ESSENTIAL SOURCE TEXTS.
Journalists concentrate on POLITICAL BIOGRAPHIES and think they KNOW IT ALL without reading ISLAMIC PRIMARY SOURCES.
They are as SHALLOW AS HELL.
Rarely says
What evidence do you have that he is being bribed by Gulf oil sheiks and/or that he is working for the British gov’t and/or establishment?
gravenimage says
There are lots of these leftist creeps out there–they aren’t all being bribed. A lot of them are true believers.
Edmund Carey says
I admit I had never heard of his person before these articles. I try to keep a level head when reading this kind of thing – the kind of level head represented by Hugh Fitzgerald’s balanced expression and carefully chosen words – but it’s a challenge. People like this consider themselves to be in the forefront of progressive, humane thinking. It would be truer to say that they are symptoms of the cultural degeneracy that means that if any Western democracy were faced today with a threat like Nazism, they would be helpless in the face of it, falling all over themselves to understand and not judge it. “A rest” is one way to say what this man deserves. Perhaps the best way.
Angemon says
After a certain age, it’s simply sad to see anti-establishment folks trying to continue being anti-establishment while actively supporting the establishment points…
Jayell says
John Simpson is effectively part of the brickwork of the BBC. That simple sentence alone explains the the ‘integrity’ of his reporting. And if you’re happy with this sort of standard, you might as well employ Homer Simpson instead.
tim gallagher says
I would say that the disturbing thing about leftie, idiotic propagandists like this Simpson character is that their views are accepted by the leftie news organisations, and the BBC, I have often heard, is a prime example of a leftie organisation. I live in Australia and our ABC (based on the BBC) is also an endlessly left wing news organisation. This is discussed a lot out here. They would also let a fool like Simpson prosper, because, in these organisations, if you don’t fit in with the relentlessly left wing view of things that they constantly push, then you would probably soon lose your career. I avoid the left wing news sources. I haven’t watched any of the ABC’s left propaganda for 20 years or so. Fortunately, there are a few sources of more sensible coverage of the news out here and I stick with them. I have heard a good conservative commentator (thank God they exist) out here, Andrew Bolt, say that journalists generally tend to be left wing (and I guess he mixes with a lot of them) and I think he is right. Unfortunately, many people actually would believe the bullshit that people like Simpson spew. I think such reporters do a lot of damage to society because many people can’t see that their view of things is garbage. They often spend their time undermining our western societies. We all have to develop a good bullshit detector. That’s the only answer to propagandists like Simpson.
TattooedMan77 says
No one in Britain watches the BBC or trusts any News Broadcast they make.
gravenimage says
BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson Deserves A Rest (Part 2)
…………….
He’s a nasty piece of work. Thanks for the expose, Mr. Fitzgerald.